And So the Police State Starts - WI Republicans Show Their Fear of Smart People

Just a few hours ago, a good friend of mine posted this quote on Facebook:

"Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation’s troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen."
~Ayn Rand

Thanks, HM.

I responded that maybe in the case of the state of Wisconsin it was the public sector workers who were the scapegoat to the Tea Party and the far right of Republican party.

Dr. William Cronon

Then I found the following articles:

Did Wisconsin GOP target Scott Walker critic with “McCarthyite” tactics? By Greg Sargent (A Washington Post article from today)

Wisconsin’s Radical Break By William Cronon (The original New York Times Article)

I won't bore you by making you re-read these articles. Let me sum up. William Cronon is a professor at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Wisconsin's Radical Break. Later the same week, the Republican Party of Wisconsin, under the open records laws of Wisconsin sent an email requesting that Dr. Cronon's employer go thorough his emails looking for certain names and information.

This is the list of words they want information on:

"Republican, Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, Rob Cowles, Scott Fitzgerald, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Glenn Grothman, Mary Lazich, Jeff Fitzgerald, Marty Beil, or Mary Bell." (1)

Dr. Cronon wrote in detail about and very openly about these events in

A Tactic I Hope Republicans Will Rethink:Using the Open Records Law to Intimidate Critics 

This is Dr.Cronon's first ever blog posting.

What happens now?

The first thing that will happen is that the Governor's office and the Republicans in the Legislature will deny any knowledge of this tactic. Not true. Not any more true than if the National Democratic Party did something similar to an enemy of Barack Obama and he said that he knew nothing.

 The next thing will be for the Republicans to defend their actions. Those actions are indefensible. There should be emails that contain all of this information: Dr. Cronon is a Professor of History and these are historical times.

What should happen? The Governor and the Legislature should renounce this act. Using these laws to violate the privacy of  a private citizen and an intellectual is disgusting. This law was designed to create transparency in the Government, not attack an individual citizen for his personal views.

Above I stated that I believe that the Republican Party is scapegoating public employees. They are also anti-intelligentsia. Conservative movements in the past and now tend to attack intellectuals first. De-fund schools, de-fund universities, and vilify educators in an effort to staunch knowledge based debate. 

For the record, not all Republicans or Conservatives or Tea Party members are not interested in intellectual debate.  However, when mob rules take over, all groups go to the lowest common denominator.

Governor Walker's Stimulus Bill - AP Report

Governor Walker's New Budget is more stimulus pork and unnecessary building projects

Wisconsin state building projects total $1.1B in Gov. Scott Walker's proposal

 An article from today's AP wire via the Green Bay Press Gazette

"Walker said in a statement that his proposal released Monday “aggressively uses the funds available to us to maintain state buildings, plan for growth, and most importantly create jobs.”

 "This plan will save or create over three million jobs -- almost all of them in the private sector." Barack Obama,  Feb. 9, 2009

 $900 million cuts from education and Governor Walker is spending millions on what?

• $76 million for a new sports and education center at UW Madison
• $44 million for a new education center at UW Eau Claire
• $5 million for a museum for the state historical society and the Department of Veterans Affairs

"to maintain state buildings"

Over 67% of the funds are for NEW construction and major renovations, not maintenance!

In his inaugural speech, Governor Walker quoted Article 1, Section 22 of the Wisconsin Constitution where it speaks to "fruglaity." Governor Walker's idea of frugality is borrowing $900 million of the $1.1 billion through new bonds!

"Other major projects include $38.5 million for expansion of the west campus and $67 million for the Institute for Medical Research both at UW-Madison, $8 million to help pay for expansion of the Marquette Dental School and $17 million to renovate Carlson Hall at UW-Whitewater"

"Walker has confirmed that he will propose cutting education aid by about $900 million..."                                            theroot.com, March 1, 2011

So the Universities, particularly UW Madison, receive the money taken from the K-12 school. Not really a lot of point in making the campuses nicer and newer when the incoming generations won't be educated well enough to be able to go to college. Or perhaps this is what Governor Walker meant when he said that Wisconsin was open for business. We won't educate our own kids, we'll educate everyone else's. That's a forwarding thinking Wisconsin-centered plan. Thanks, Scott.

Here is a specific list of the projects on this list:

$67 million for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Medical Research
$50 million for UW-Milwaukee
$44 million for an education building at UW-Eau Claire
$38.5 million for UW-Madison West Campus Expansion
$27.4 million to improve existing DHC and state prison facilities
$17 million to renovate Carlson Hall at UW-Whitewater
$8 million to support the expansion of the Marquette University Dental School 

That's $251.9 million for universities and prisons. Only one is where our uneducated students will end up.

The Search for Employment in America

There is a constant theme in America today: We need more jobs, find us more jobs, the stimulus was supposed to create jobs, JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!

Well, here's an observation from my little corner of the world: People don't want to work!

I know of a company that pays reasonably well for its area, has a great local reputation and the job is relatively prestigious for a service industry position. The number of viable candidates for this position: 0! That's right, zero. Most of the applicants have terrible work histories, no experience or a very unreliable background.

What people really want is to continue to collect their unemployment checks until their old job in their old field comes back. Newsflash: That ain't gonna happen! Buggy whip makers had to find something else to do and so should you.

A lot is made of the fact that America has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs overseas. So what! First it was the Japanese, then the robots and computers, now it's the Chinese and the Indians. Let 'em have the manufacturing jobs. Go back to school, learn computer design or entrepreneurship or alternative energy science or anything with a future.

I hear you saying it: But this is what my daddy did and his daddy before him. This is what I want to do?

Really? And what about his daddy or his daddy... chances are somewhere along the line one of your ancestors decided to stop scraping a bare existence out of someone else's soil and went and found a new skill.

America has the opportunity to be the world leader... not by going backward to the industries that made the 20th Century- "the American Century,"  but forward into  the 21st Century. We don't need to do the building, other people will do it for us. What we need to do is tell them what to build. No one in the world is better than Americans at innovation and invention.

What are the keys to a Great American Future?

1) Education. If we can get back to educating our students, we will be better able to dominate world business. This includes making college more affordable and more worthwhile. (See my blog posting on philosophy in school.)

2) Reasonable, Restricted Accountability in Business: Government in the US should make sure that the businesses that are perceived by the world to be American companies are leading the world in human rights, environmental responsibility and fiscal transparency.

3) Industry Oversight Organizations: Groups assembled by different industries to oversee the conduct of companies in their industry. A little bit of self-control would be wonderful.

4) Taxation with a Purpose: The endless cry that taxes are too high misses the point. Americans are willing to pay for what they get, but governments (local, state & federal) need to show people in a clear and simple way, where their money is going. Justify what you take and we will care less that you take it.

5) Predictable Policies Toward Business: Every time a new party takes over they begin to dismantle the stuff that the previous governments put in, regardless of whether they are working or not. Kill the things that don't work and try new things. Stagnation is worse than confusion, but not much.

These are just the beginning of ideas to move America into the 21st century.

Unfinished Business is the Linchpin to Gov. Walker's Budget

During his address to a joint session of the State Legislature, Governor Scott Walker repeated several times that the "tools" provided by the Budget Repair Bill will be necessary for local governments to balance out the cuts proposed in his biennial budget.

The problem is that the Budget Repair Bill has not passed and soon will be a moot point.

According to Governor Walker, the changes to collective bargaining provided by the Budget Repair Bill would allow local governments to not only compensate for the cuts in state aid, but allow them a surplus that they can apply to other parts of our childrens' education.

At the same time, he proposes freeing the UW Madison and UW Milwaukee from the constraints of answering to the state. He also proposes the creation of charter schools all over the state and parents' choice in the Milwaukee area as well.

In this one man's opinion today, that is a lot to promise while cutting the budget significantly.

It remains to read in the budget what parts will work and which ones won't.

The Greatest Failing of American Education

A very good friend of mine, with very different political views, got me to thinking about something that I have believed since college.

The lack of philosophical education has destroyed critical thinking. Lack of critical thinking causes us to choose leaders who are 'pretty,' not leaders who are wise.

Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer by Rembrandt

If one does not know history, one is doomed to repeat it. Everyone know this axiom, but know actually does anything about it.

Witness the small minded ideas of people who use the public school system to enforce their point of view. Text books that minimized slave trade, ones that don't mention the excesses of union, one that emphasize the contributions of one group or another.

This evening on NBC Nightly News they interviewed the head of Intel who said that our lack of investment in education will be our downfall (I'm paraphrasing). He was speaking specifically of math and science, but I would argue that philosophy and literature are the subjects that give reason to the former.

How many of our students leave high school or even college understanding the centuries long exploration of human rights, political systems, economics, and our relationship to the universe? How many understand the Copernican Revolution, let alone the Kantian Revolution?

In short, the best way to keep America at the top of world, strong and wealthy, we must educate our children in every subject, not just the ones that will earn them a great starting salary. In the end, the salary is just the start, life comes sometime after that.